In defeat, Gustafsson does for Jon Jones what Jones couldn't do for himself

TORONTO – Because no one knows how to tempt the fight gods quite like professional fighters, UFC light heavyweight champion Jon Jones entered Toronto’s Air Canada Centre on Saturday night wearing a t-shirt that read “Not Quite Human.”

A few minutes later he was standing opposite a game Alexander Gustafsson, leaking blood that looked very much human.

Surprised? So was Jones (19-1 MMA, 13-1 UFC), from the look of it. Not Gustafsson (15-2 MMA, 7-2 UFC), though. There may not have been many people who thought he stood a chance in the UFC 165 main event, but he was one of them. That much was clear when he took all Jones’ best stuff – his spinning elbows, his snapping head kicks, even his big brother-esque kneecap stomps – and came right back with heavy artillery of his own.

Before Jones knew it, he was in a fight. What we were about to find out was, could he handle that?

Maybe we didn’t even realize that was a question until now. Or maybe we did, but we just assumed Gustafsson wouldn’t be the one to give us an answer. Just look at Jones’ highlight tape and you’ll see almost every relevant light heavyweight champion of the last decade on the business end of a beating. Meanwhile the most impressive thing the UFC could find to say about Gustafsson was that he was slightly taller than the champ. By the end of the first round, we knew he was much more than that.

Even if Gustafsson had stopped there, it might have been a moral victory. Remember what a big deal people made of it when former champ Lyoto Machida managed to land a couple clean punches on Jones? For Gustafsson, winning the first round and slicing Jones open seemed like it could be a career achievement. But, as we saw over the course of the 25-minute fight, Gustafsson wasn’t content with a solid second-place showing. And by pushing the champ to his limits, he may have done for Jones what Jones has been unable to do for himself.

As UFC President Dana White said before this fight, a lot of fans just don’t seem to like Jones, for whatever reason. Some say it’s because he’s cocky, and not the humble everyman they expect a 26-year-old phenom world champ to be. Or maybe it’s because they think he’s fake, and not nearly as genuine as all the other grinning pro athletes they only know from TV.

Then again, maybe it’s something else. Maybe it’s the vague sense that he was a talented brat, someone who’d been gifted something he didn’t deserve and couldn’t fully appreciate. Every fight saw him jump out in front and then stay there. For some people rooting for a guy like that feels like rooting for Coca-Cola.

But Gustafsson didn’t just test Jones, he pushed him over the edge. He opened Jones up – literally and figuratively – and showed us all a whole new side of him. We already knew Jones had uncommon talent. Now we know he has heart. We know he doesn’t mind seeing his own blood. We know that when he finds himself in a dog fight, he’s perfectly capable of biting back.

Will that make all Jones’ haters love him? Maybe not, but they have to respect him. By making Jones look human, Gustafsson may have also made him strangely relatable.

If that’s not enough, they can comfort themselves with the knowledge that they may have combined for one of the greatest MMA fights of all time. As they sit together in a Toronto hospital tonight, hopefully that offers them both some comfort.

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